plain; the past is gone, the feudal castle is dismantled, the distance between classes greatly reduced. Unfortunate as it may be, the people have begun to think, to ask reasons for what they do and suffer and believe, and to call the past to account. Old spells are broken, old reliances gone. Men can no longer be kept down by pageantry, state robes, forms and shows. Allowing it to be best, that society should rest on the depression of the multitude, the multitude will no longer be quiet when they are trodden under foot, but ask impatiently for a reason why they too may not have a share in social blessings. Such is the state of things, and we must make the best of what we cannot prevent. Right or wrong, the people will think; and is it not important that they should think justly? that they should be inspired with the love of truth, and instructed how to seek it? that they should be established by wise culture in the great principles on which religion and society rest, and be protected from scepticism and wild speculation by intercourse with enlightened and virtuous men? It is plain that, in the actual state of the world, nothing can avail us, but a real improvement of the mass of the people. No stable foundation can be laid for us but in men's minds. Alarming as the truth is, it should be told, that outward institutions cannot now secure us. Mightier powers than institutions have come into play among us, the judgment, the opinions, the feelings of the many; and all hopes of stability, which do not rest on the progress of the many, must perish."

The last and most serious objection to the possibility of the elevation proposed for the laboring class, by that school of democrated philanthropy of which we recognise Dr. Channing as one of the wisest and purest teachers, is, that the laborer cannot give the requisite time and strength to intellectual, social, and moral culture, without starving his family, and impoverishing the community. Political Economy,' say those who urge this objection, 'by showing that population outstrips the means of improvement, passes an irrepealable sentence of ignorance and degradation on the laborer. Nature has laid this heavy ban on the mass of the people, and it is idle to set up our theories and dreams of improvement against nature.'

But this objection generally comes from a suspicious source-" from the men who abound, and are at ease; who think more of property than of any other human interest; who have little concern for the mass of their fellow-creatures; who are willing that others should bear all the burdens of life, and that any social order should continue which secures to themselves personal comfort or gratification."

The objection is but a repetition of the old doctrine, that what has been must be; that the future is always to repeat the past, and society to tread for ever the same beaten path—a doctrine exploded not only by the broad fact of general progress, in greater or less degree observable throughout all the civilized world, but especially by the experience of our own country.

"The working classes here have risen and are still rising intellectually, and yet there are no signs of starvation, nor are we becoming the poorest people on earth. By far the most interesting view of this country is the condition of the working multitude. Nothing among us deserves the attention of the traveller so much as the force of thought and character, and the self-respect awakened by our history and institutions in the mass of the peopie. Our prosperous classes are much like the same classes abroad, though, as we hope, of purer morals; but the great working multitude leave far behind them the laborers of other countries. No man of

observation and benevolence can converse with them, without being struck and delighted with the signs they give of strong and sound intellect and manly principle. And who is authorized to set bounds to this progress? In improvement the first steps are the hardest. The difficulty is to wake up men's souls, not to continue their action. Every accession of light and strength is a help to new acquisitions."

The absurdity of the idea that the intellectual cultivation of the mass of the people could have the effect of diminishing their productive energy and efficiency, so as to starve and impoverish the country, scarcely needed the refutation which Dr. Channing gives to it at some length. It is indeed to be frightened by a shadow. Apart from the incalculable social benefit and economy which would flow from the suppression of Intemperance, of Wastefulness, of Sloth, of ignorance on the all-important subject of Health-apart, too, from the truth that the happiness of a community depends vastly more on the distribution than on the amount of its wealth-apart from these considerations, who can doubt that with the growth of intellectual and moral power in the community, its productive power will increase, that industry will become more efficient, that a wiser economy will accumulate wealth, that unimagined resources of art and nature will be discovered? "Bodily or material force," says the author, "can be measured, but not the forces of the soul, nor can the results of increased mental energy be foretold. Such a community will tread down obstacles now deemed invincible, and turn them into helps. The Inward moulds the Outward. The power of a people lies in its mind; and this mind, if fortified and enlarged, will bring external things into harmony with itself. It will create a new world around it corresponding to itself."

In the following passage Dr. Channing touches upon a great ideaor rather upon two which associate themselves closely together:

"Another consideration in reply to the objection is, that as yet no community has seriously set itself to the work of improving all its members, so that what is possible remains to be ascertained. No experiment has been made to determine how far liberal provision can be made at once for the body and mind of the laborer. The highest social art is yet in its infancy. Great minds have nowhere solemnly, earnestly undertaken to resolve the problem, how the multitude of men may be elevated. The trial is to come. Still more, the multitude have nowhere comprehended distinctly the true idea of progress, and resolved deliberately and solemnly to reduce it to reality. This great thought, however, is gradually opening on them, and it is destined to work wonders. From themselves, their salvation must chiefly Little can be done for them by others, till a spring is touched in their own breasts; and this being done, they cannot fail. The people, as history shows us, can accomplish miracles under the power of a great idea. How much have they often done and suffered in critical moments for country, for religion? The great idea of their own elevation is only beginning to unfold itself within them, and its energy is not to be foretold. A lofty conception of this kind, were it once distinctly seized, would be a new life breathed into them. Under this impulse they would create time and strength for their high calling, and would not only regenerate themselves but the community."

come.

Here is alluded to the great problem of which the solution is indis

pensable before any material progress can be made toward the great object of the moral improvement and elevation of the mass of men— 'how far liberal provision can be made at once for the body and mind of the laborer.' The former must be the necessary antecedent, before attention can be yielded to the latter. And so long as society is governed by any system of which the tendency is to embarrass the productive industry of the mass by the pressure of a single unnecessary tax, or clog or discouragement of any kind, so long is the moral elevation of that mass proportionately depressed and retarded. Fearful is the responsibility assumed by those who place themselves at the centre of the social system, to work those springs of legislation which create and direct the motion of the whole machinery. How criminal the folly of those who deal rashly and ignorantly with the solemn duties of the task-how grievous the guilt of those who bring to them unholy motives of selfishness or ambition, to the base gratification of which may be sacrificed perhaps the highest human rights and interests of countless thousands of fellow-beings! A bad measure of legislation, adopted for the promotion of partial interests, what imagination can form a faint conception of the amount of evil and suffering, multiplied out into infinite ramifications of consequences, of which it is often the origin and cause, and of which the framer of the measure becomes the responsible author! Let it not be supposed that it stops short at its mere immediate apparent effects, in simply involving a certain amount of positive loss to the whole or to a part of the community, causing a certain diminution in the aggregate of the national wealth. It invariably acts, in its eventual effect, as a tax and burthen upon the industry of the laboring mass; it adds so much to the length and severity of the poor man's toil; it subtracts so much from his means of comfortable sustenance, and his opportunities of mental improvement and moral elevation. It depresses him by so much in the scale of being, reacting with an unerring effect upon even the healthy perfection of his physical constitution, and often prolongs and multiplies itself through his offspring in an indefinite progress of degeneration. And here are we able to perceive the immeasurable importance of the science of Political Economy, in that moral influence upon the condition and progress of society, which affords the point of view from which it presents its highest and most solemn interest to the student of its grandly simple and harmonious principles

In connexion with this point, of the possibility of combining a liberal provision at once for the body and the mind of the laborer, we may allude to an idea which, though not a novel one, has as yet received but a very imperfect developement; and in which the attempts at a practical application of it that have been made, have always heretofore been united with such fatal errors, honest or corrupt, that a prejudice has been created against it in the minds of many which it may be difficult to combat. We refer to the principle of Combination of which we

see an imperfect use made in certain industrial associations which have been formed or attempted, with various success, in different countries, as also in that Socialism' which has recently been made a subject of serious agitation in England. It is very certain that this principle is capable of producing immense results, so far as regards the simple consideration of external prosperity and abundance. How far it may with safety be carried-liable as it obviously is to fatal abuse-and in what modes it may be possible to combine it with that opposite principle of Individuality which, with all the evil accompanying it, is a fundamental law of our nature, as it is the essential principle of our modern civilization, and seems an indispensable stimulus to exertion-constitutes a problem of profound difficulty; and every attempt at its solution, however defective, however abortive, deserves. our most anxious observation.

At any rate, whether or not this principle, according to the theory of 'Socialism,' contains the germ of a new system which shall realize for the laboring mass of mankind the important object in view, of securing a vastly increased amount of the necessaries and comforts of life at a great economy of toil and time, there can be no doubt that even without it, the elevation of the standard of popular intelligence and morals would not only prevent an immense amount of waste, through a countless variety of modes of vice and ignorance, but would also directly cause a still greater increase of efficiency in every branch of productive industry. The former may afford a great alleviation to the condition of the wretched mass of the working population of England, from whose necessities and character its suggestion has arisen; and it is not to be denied that it finds no slight support, not only in the precedent of a community of goods bequeathed to us from the earliest and purest days of Christianity, but also in the consideration of the incalculable amount of moral evil which appears directly assignable to the selfish principle of individuality of property. This may be true, and by a stretch of concession the supposition may even be granted, of the possibility of substituting for the latter principle, in any human community on a large scale, the law of love with the practice of the primitive Christianity above referred to. That which can refer to such a sanction, as well as to the spirit of the religion of which that practice was but an application-however impossible it may now seem, and foreign to all the habits and modes of thinking of our present civilization-is at least entitled to our respect, as possibly not so total an impracticability, not so radically inconsistent with the fundamental laws of man's nature, as we may at first be disposed to pronounce it. Yet still it appears manifest that this is not to be the condition of the laboring mass in this country. The democratic civilization which we are engaged in slowly and painfully working out, is animated by a different spirit, that of diffusiveness, is organized on an opposite principle, that of individuality. Whether

the perfect freedom of the latter may not eventually lead, by the natural tendency of untrammeled human nature, toward the former, so as to produce an harmonious blending of the two, and thus to realize the whole grand conception of the pure theory of Christianity, the union of Perfect Liberty with Perfect Love-when "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self "-we may not foretell; though we feel cheered by a deep, though dim, faith that such is the result toward which our present harsh and selfish transition state is slowly tending, such the sublime order which an unseen hand is gradually elaborating out of the wild moral chaos of our present civilization. But at any rate, it is the principle of Individuality which now rules the hour, and must continue to rule it with undivided sway; nor must we distract our attention with vain and impracticable efforts to combat it, or to supersede it by any other.

Nor, indeed, should we wish to do so. Let us leave human nature to itself, and see what it will do. Let us make every man free, materially and spiritually, embarrassing the completeness of his Liberty as little as possible by the pressure of Law and Government. The result of the freedom we now enjoy-a very imperfect one indeedis, we must concede, an universal and intense selfishness—a passion for property, the indulgence of which, stimulated by conspiring circumstances, has exerted much pernicious and demoralizing effect upon our national character. But such will not be always the case; nor should we be discouraged, by the evils attendant upon a transition state, from pursuing fearlessly the developement of great principles of the truth of which-springing out of, and necessarily therefore not inconsistent with, the essential laws and attributes of human nature— we are profoundly convinced.

This selfish principle which we have called that of Individuality, this necessary first consequence of that of perfect freedom, has already produced immense results of general prosperity and abundance, as a stimulus to exertion and enterprise; and when relieved from the incubus of bad legislation, will undoubtedly act with vastly increased efficiency in the same direction. To this, then, we must look as our reliance, though we may still watch with anxious interest the experiments of 'Socialism,' or any other efforts of a similar kind toward a better state of things, that may be made in other countries. And our chief object, so far as it is to be affected by the influence of government (and that influence is unquestionably strong and pervading) -should be to promote to the utmost extent possible, the efficiency of its action for the creation of national wealth and individual prosperity. And in this point of view will appear all the moral importance of the great struggle for Currency Reform in which our party is now engaged. The currency of a country has been indeed not inaptly called the life-blood of the whole system of national industry. A healthy and natural condition of this is the first requisite to nation.